The Oak Ridge Birthday Club began informally in 1918 with a group of neighbor women that joined together to sew dresses and roll bandages for the Red Cross during WWI. They were from the Bismark, Oak Ridge, Mackey and Bleakley school districts near Lawrence, Kansas. The women enjoyed the companionship so much that they continued meeting after the war, confining their members to the Oak Ridge area due to difficulty of travel with horses and buggies on bad roads.

The Oak Ridge Birthday Club wrote their first constitution in 1923, stating that the 24 members would meet once a month, pay dues, and give a gift to a secret pal each year in their birthday month. The club also began creating an annual program that year listing members, officers, the club song, the dates of meetings, and who would be hosting. Members paid for year books and dues annually while penny collections were taken monthly. The funds were used to send flowers and cards to members in the hospital or in mourning.

Though the club was mainly social, in 1939 members were encouraged to write to Kansas Senator Capper and ask him to “keep us out of the war.” That same year the club sent 17 pounds of cookies in a bushel basket to Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. During WWII the club made crib quilts for the Red Cross. In addition to baking and sewing, the club made numerous cash donations to Children’s Mercy and the Veterans Administration Hospital in Topeka, Kansas, as well as other local and national aid organizations over the years.

The membership of the Oak Ridge Birthday Club rose to more than 24 members in the 1930s and began to fall below 24 in the 1980s, as more women were working outside of the home, making them unavailable for daytime meetings. In 1994 there were 12 active members who decided to disband in 1995 because they were aging and there were no younger members to carry on group activities. Oak Ridge Birthday Club reunions were held yearly up until 2006.

[Information pulled from collection material.]